can you reccomend me teen- young adult romance or paranormal or fantasy books;
Teen/YA isn’t really my ‘thing’, but I’m gonna aim for some books which would suit the ‘readable and relatable’ style that characterises ‘Young Adult’.
Derek Landy - Skulduggery Pleasant series.
Genre: (contemporary) fantasy, ‘YA’.
If I had to sum up Skulduggery Pleasant in one word, that word would be ‘hilarious’. The basic premise of Skulduggery is this: teenager finds herself thrown into a world of magic and mayhem when she partners up with a mysterious magical detective, who also happens to be a skeleton (for reasons). Hilarity ensues, featuring a plethora of crazy characters getting themselves into even crazier situations, which they then deal with in the most sarcastic way possible. TL;DR If you haven’t read Skulduggery Pleasant, then what the hell have you been doing with your life so far?!
Brandon Sanderson - The Stormlight Archive series.
Brandon Sanderson is one of my favourite current fantasy authors, and that’s mostly because he’s really, really good at worldbuilding (particularly when it comes to well-defined magical systems). His tone is humorous without being vapid, and the characters are well established and explored. There are romantic subplots, but the backbone of the series is fantasy.Most of his novels are actually set inside a larger universe, ‘Cosmere’, so if you enjoy Stormlight then consider reading some of his other stuff - the Mistborn series is another good starting point. Sanderson also has an explicitly ‘Young Adult’ series in The Reckoners Trilogy, but it’s not his strongest work. The first novel in The Stormlight Archive is The Way of Kings: Part One.
Madeline Miller - The Song of Achilles.
Genre: romance, historical fantasy (I guess?).
You wanted romance - have some romance! Of the very gay and quite emotional kind, of course. Inspired by the Iliad (sort of), TSOA retells the story Troy as a romance involving Achilles and Patroclus. You know, those two Greek dudes who were so obviously gay, but people have been pretending for centuries weren’t gay? Yeah, them.Miller plays it pretty loose with her source material, but if you take the book as its own entity then it’s well worth the read.
Philip Pullman - His Dark Materials trilogy.
Remember earlier when I asked what the hell you’d been doing if you hadn’t been reading Skulduggery Pleasant? The only acceptable answer would have been, ‘reading His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and getting overly attached to Lee and Hester’.The premise: Lyra, a young girl, lives in a parallel universe where every person has a daemon - an extension of their soul which functions as a sentient companion. When Lyra’s best friend Roger is kidnapped, she and her daemon Pantalaimon decide they have to go to the North Pole and rescue him, because they are literally fucking insane and do whatever the fuck they like. Little do they know, this totally rational decision will land them in the middle of a divine struggle for Creation itself.His Dark Materials is basically a Genesis retelling disguised as an awesome fantasy series with witches, soul-eating ghosts, inter-dimensional travel and armoured fucking bears, and if that doesn’t sound up your street then I’m willing to question the integrity of your street. What is up your street? If it’s not this, I’m not sure I want to know.The first book is The Northern Lights (or ‘The Golden Compass’, if you live in the same country that JK Rowling couldn’t rely upon to know what a philosopher is). Oh, also, slight warning - you might cry during The Subtle Knife. I do.
